11 Icky But Interesting Facts About Poop

Let’s talk about poop. Sure, it’s not exactly dinner party fodder, but it’s important to educate yourself about bowel movements — what’s weird, what’s normal, what’s healthy, what’s not. That’s because your bathroom behavior can be an important clue to your overall health: Your poop can reveal signs of infections, digestive problems, and even early signs of cancer, according to gastroenterologist Anish Sheth, MD, co-author of the books What’s Your Poo Telling You? and What’s My Pee Telling Me?

So brush up on this toilet trivia, and then pay attention to how often you go, how long it takes, and what the end result looks and, yes, smells like. Simply put, know your poop.

Poop: What's Really In It

Water makes up about 75 percent of your bowel movements. The rest is an often-stinky combination of fiber, dead and live bacteria, other cells, and mucus. Soluble fibers found in foods like beans and nuts are broken down during digestion and form a gel-like substance that becomes part of your poop.

On the other hand, foods packed with insoluble fiber, such as corn, oat bran, and carrots, are more difficult for your body to digest, which explains why they may emerge in the toilet bowl looking relatively unchanged.

Color Matters

As you may have noticed at one point or another, stool color can vary — a lot — depending on what kinds of food you’ve ingested and other factors. Dr. Sheth has seen patients get full work-ups for bright red stool that turned out to be nothing more than the passing of beets. Leafy vegetables can cause green stool, while certain medications can make your waste look white or clay-colored. Look out for jet-black stool. Though it could be from something as harmless as iron supplements or black licorice, the color could also be a sign of bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract.

Shape Matters Too

Another advocate of looking before you flush is Mehmet Oz, MD, host of The Dr. Oz Show, who explained during a now-famous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that the perfect stool is log-like and S-shaped, not broken up into pieces. Part of getting that log-style shape, compared to poo that comes out more pebbly-looking, comes from eating fiber, which lends bulk to stool and acts as a glue to keep the stool stuck together as it exits your body. Pencil-thin poops, on the other hand, can be a sign of rectal cancer, which narrows the opening through which stool passes, according to Sheth.

The Nose Knows a Problem

A bowel movement never smells pleasant, but particularly pungent stool is often a sign of infection, according to Sheth. Terrible-smelling poops are a signature side effect of one stomach bug caused by the parasite giardia, ingested most often by swimming in fresh water lakes. It could also suggest a more serious digestive condition such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, or celiac disease.

'Normal' Is Relative

Do you hit the bathroom at the same exact time every morning, or can you go days before you need to go No. 2? It’s all normal, says Sheth — the important thing is that you’re consistent for your own routine. A big decrease in output could be due to a diet change (fiber intake), which is why many people find they’re less regular on weekends or vacation — they may be eating less fiber or working out less often, both of which promote healthy digestion. Other factors affecting output — either a decrease or an increase — are gastrointestinal disorders, an overactive thyroid, or colon cancer.

Cultural differences play a role too. Sheth notes in his book that South Asians unload nearly three times as much stool as British people do, a difference he explains is largely due to the higher fiber content in the average Indian diet.

According to Sheth on his Web site DrStool.com, the average American man excretes 150 grams (about one-third of a pound) of stool every day, or the equivalent of 5 tons in a lifetime!

Diarrhea is Your Stool on Speed

Digestion can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, during which time the food you’ve eaten travels down your esophagus to your stomach, then to your small intestine, your large intestine, and out through the anus.

Diarrhea is the result of stool passing too quickly through the large intestine, where most of the water content is absorbed. (Constipation, on the other hand, is when it takes too long for stool to pass through.) Loose stools can be due to many factors, including stomach viruses and food-borne illness. They can also result from food allergies or intolerances, like lactose intolerance, or from other digestive issues.

Poop Should Sink

Listen for the sound of your stool as it hits the water in the toilet. Floating stools are often an indication of high fat content, which can be a sign of malabsorption, a condition in which you can't absorb enough fat and other nutrients from the food you’re ingesting. It’s associated with celiac disease or chronic pancreatitis.

It's Normal to Pass Gas ... Often

The act of flatulence is embarrassing, at least for some, but this result of harmless bacteria breaking down food in the large intestine is completely healthy. Your colon is filled with bacteria that release gas as a byproduct of digesting the food you eat. Your body absorbs some of it into the bloodstream, which you breathe out through your lungs, and expels the rest out of your other end. It’s normal to pass gas anywhere from 10 to 18 times a day, according to the American College of Gastroenterology.

You Can Get a Stool Transplant

Fecal microbiota transplants are real — and they work. A study just released at the American College of Gastroenterology’s annual meeting found that such transplants — in which stool from a healthy person is placed in the colon of an infected person — helped treat bouts of recurrent diarrhea associated with a C. difficile bacterial infection. Such transplants have also effectively treated inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

The trillions of good bacteria in a healthy person’s stool can help re-colonize the digestive tract and treat infections that haven’t responded well to other treatment, including antibiotics and probiotics, Sheth says.

So how do you ask someone to be your stool donor? And more importantly — who? Sheth suggests asking someone whose healthy gut bacteria likely differs from yours; ideally, a friend or family member who lives in a different household.

Reading on the Toilet Isn't So Healthy

Studies suggest that the more time you spend in the bathroom, specifically reading, the more likely you are to develop hemorrhoids, or swollen blood vessels in and around the anus. It sounds like a strange correlation, but think about it: The longer you stay in the bathroom trying to go, the more pressure and stress you put down there. Sitting for too long on the toilet can also restrict blood flow around the anal area, which can make hemorrhoids worse.

Most of the time, a diet devoid of fiber, which keeps your bowels regular and prevents constipation and hard stools, is to blame. Most Americans eat 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day; doctors recommend 30 to 35 grams to prevent hemorrhoids, according to researchers from Los Angeles Medical Center.

Your Cell Phone Could Be Covered With No. 2

Wash your hands well after using the bathroom, or poop may travel with you. In a study released earlier this month, British researchers discovered that one in six cell phones may be contaminated with fecal matter that can spread E. coli bacteria, after they collected nearly 400 samples in 12 different cities.

Since phones tend to travel with everywhere — especially places where we eat, like kitchen counters, restaurant tables, and desks, to name a few — the E. coli bacteria detected on them may play a role in spreading illness.

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